A chef's secrets for cooking with wine

Cooking with wine is almost as much fun as drinking it. I hardly ever make a savory dish or sauce without adding a splash of wine to it.

I first acquired this delicious habit working the line as a sauté cook. (I cooked professionally for almost a decade.) Now, as a wine student with lots of half-finished bottles hanging around the house, I’ve discovered it once again.

Do you get bored waiting for the oven to preheat or the pasta water to boil? “Needing” wine for a recipe is a great excuse to open a bottle before dinner.

And food science tells us that alcohol absorbs and amplifies flavor. It’s one of those secret reasons that restaurant food often tastes better than home-cooked food. (Another reason is that restaurant chefs use immoderate amounts of salt and butter…I’m sorry to spill the beans.)

But not everything you’ve heard about cooking with wine is the gospel truth. While I’m dishing out my hard-won, back-of-the-house cooking secrets, here’s three myths about cooking with wine that need to die, already.

Myth #1: Don’t cook with anything you wouldn’t drink.

The old saw goes like this: “Don’t cook with anything you wouldn’t drink.” I heard it in culinary school, from Alton Brown on the TV, and from countless wine store employees trying to upsell me even after I tell them the wine’s not for me, it’s for my Bolognese.

This is the culinary version of the computer science axiom, “Garbage in, garbage out.” The idea is that skill and effort can’t ever compensate for poor ingredients–that faulty raw materials will inevitably corrupt the final results.

Chefs have the importance of ingredient quality drilled into us dogmatically. We’re taught that it’s taboo to use anything but the best available ingredients, and that any compromise in quality is a slippery slope to serving dog food on a plate.

I’m somewhat sympathetic to this argument. There are times when you absolutely should not skimp on ingredients, and small shortcuts in the kitchen can indeed add up to lousy results.

But here in the real world, I think it’s a worse sin to waste an exceptional bottle on a pasta sauce (and thus have no outlet at all for using up the mediocre bottles) than it is to cheap out on the cooking wine. Most of us don’t have an unlimited budget for food and wine. (And if you do, then when’s dinner?)

In my mind, there’s a yawning gap between fine wine and “pour it down the sink and run the faucet for half a minute” wine. Inside that gap reside many wines that are not so good to drink on their own, but are just fine to cook with.

The only two really important questions in any kitchen are, “Is it safe to eat?” and “Does it taste good?” Some chefs and wine people may disagree with me on this–but I challenge anyone to tell me the region, vintage and approximate price of the three whole ounces of Sauvignon Blanc I dumped into the cream of asparagus soup.

Here’s a short list of wines that may not meet your standards of drinkability (or mine) but that are unlikely to ruin a cooked dish:

Mass-produced wine, box wine, jug wine, wine that’s been open in the fridge for a week or two, wine that you tried one glass of and said “meh,” wine that was stored too hot or too cold, wine from a grape variety you don’t love, wine that should probably have been enjoyed last year but you forgot.

Here’s a short list of wines that you should not cook with:

Wines with severe faults (vinegar, cork taint, mold, excessive sediment), flavored wines, and sweet wines (unless the recipe calls for it).

While we’re at it, also be careful about using wine with extremely pronounced varietal characteristics (e.g. Riesling), as these could show up in the final dish. And finally, stay away from the “cooking wine” sold in grocery stores in the salad dressing aisle. It’s abominable boiled trash, and way too salty.

So, yeah. Generally speaking it’s fine to cook with so-so wine. In fact, it’s a great way to use up unfinished bottles and cut down on waste. If you regularly use wine in recipes, it might be worth reserving a refrigerator shelf for a box of your favorite Cardboardeaux.

How’s this for a PSA? Professional kitchens mainly use box wine. Yep, it’s true–that divine $28 carbonara at a white-tablecloth place near you is made with two generous splashes of something you probably wouldn’t serve to your guests.

Restaurants often choose something like Franzia or Bota Box because it’s cheap, less perishable than bottled wine, and readily available from distributors. Also–and I speak from experience–it’s because the kitchen staff are less tempted to steal or drink it. Elder chefs have told me that before box wine became widespread, sauté stations around the country were stocked with gallon jugs of Gallo’s Hearty Burgundy and Chablis.

There are a couple of exceptions to the cheap-wine-is-fine rule. First, consider using higher-quality wines for foods with subtle flavors, such as mild seafood and cream sauces. While most inexpensive wines are competently made, some can have “off” or unbalanced flavors. (Oak chips, anyone?) You don’t want to risk having a cheap wine taste spoil a delicate dish. Better to be safe with a bottle you’ve tasted before and would drink again.

A second exception: It makes more sense to splurge on wine for a dish where the wine is a main component. (You can often identify this type of recipe by its name. For example, “Wine-Poached Pears” or “Mussels Steamed in a Whole-Ass Bottle of Chardonnay.”) In both of these cases, mid-shelf is good enough–no need to treat those pears to a First-Growth spa day.

Myth #2: For white sauce, use white wine. For red sauce, use red wine.

This is another cooking “rule” that’s widely practiced by professional chefs and home cooks alike.

For white dishes (cream sauces, white beans, etc.) you’re supposed to use white wine. Red wine goes in anything red or brown, such as tomato sauce, pan gravies, and beef stew. It’s traditional–and it makes a certain kind of intuitive sense–but like a lot of conventional wine wisdom, it’s wrong.

Actually, a dry un-oaked white wine is better for almost any recipe. It gives you more control over the taste and appearance of the final dish.

Here’s why. (This gets a little nerdy, but bear with me.)

White wine is composed of a few different things, including water, alcohol, sugar, acids, and dissolved flavor compounds. These flavor compounds ultimately come from the extracted grape juice after the grapes have been crushed/pressed and the solids thrown away.

The components present in white wine account for most of the ways wine can improve a dish. Let’s review what those are: The water dilutes the dish and thereby lengthens cooking time, which softens meat proteins and gives flavors time to integrate. The alcohol dissolves alcohol-soluble vegetable compounds and adds a pleasant dryness. The trace amounts of wine-grape solids enhance the complexity of the flavor. And the acidity and sugar stimulate our palates. Acids and sugars balance each other out, increasing the intensity of the final dish while correcting any part that’s overly tart or sweet.

Red wine includes all of the above components, plus tannins and pigments derived from the grape skin and (often) from oak aging. That’s the biggest difference when it comes to choosing a wine to cook with. White wine: Almost no tannins. Red wine: Tannins.

Tannins are great–when you want them around. The problem with tannins is that they can change the flavor, color, and texture of a dish. And not always in good ways.

Tannins create a drying or chalky sensation in the mouth. They also taste bitter. While some bitterness is part of the balance of flavor in food, most diners don’t enjoy an excess of bitter flavors.

When the lighter, aromatic flavors in red wine cook off, the tannins can easily become harsher in taste. They get more prominent in the mix, too. When you reduce a sauce or braise, you’re evaporating the water and concentrating all the solids, including tannins.

And pigments? Many red wines have shades of blue and purple in them. That extra color can turn your vibrant red-and-green marinara sauce a murky brown.

Cooking with red wine is less forgiving, too. If you add too much white wine, you can cook it off and then adjust the sweetness-acidity balance in the final product. If you add too much red wine, there’s really no getting rid of the dark-ish color and sour, bitter wine flavor.

I’ve messed up enough sauces with a heavy-handed or overly strong red-wine pour. These days, white wine is what I reach for first, regardless of the color of the dish. (And sherry–I love to use sherry when cooking vegetables, gratins, mushrooms, and shellfish.)

Dry white wines add a bright flavor to most dishes without the risk of muddying the taste or color. And with white wines, getting the quantity exactly right is less important.

I still cook with red wine for traditional European recipes that call for it: Coq au vin, Bordelaise sauce, Chianti short ribs. Dishes with a lot of sweetness–think tomato/olive sauces and chili con carne–can benefit from the slight bitterness that tannins provide. And as a thrifty home cook, I will definitely use red wine if that’s what I happen to have open in my fridge.

But for most pasta and stew and vegetable dishes, white wine is a safer bet. A bonus for the home cook is that you only need to keep one open bottle (or box) on hand.

Myth #3: The alcohol cooks off!

As a kid, I savored the naughty thrill of eating borracho (“drunk”) beans at the Tex-Mex buffet, or having a morsel of brandy-soaked fruitcake at Christmas.

As an adult, I still get a charge from adding a wee dram to a dish. Alcohol heightens flavor and makes everything taste just a little “extra.”

Gin-cured salmon, bananas Foster, bourbon BBQ sauce, beer brats, Chardonnay sauce…let’s eat ’em all! We all know that too much alcohol is unhealthy–but boozy food must not count. The alcohol cooks off, am I right?

Yes, it does–but nowhere near as fast as most people think.

The ugly truth is that at common cooking temperatures, alcohol evaporates only slightly faster than water. If there’s still water in a dish that you added wine or liquor to, then you can bet that much of the alcohol is still there, too.

Heat and agitation–such as shaking or stirring a hot pan–increase the rate at which alcohol disperses. Other factors, like the density of creamy or layered dishes, can make those foods retain their alcohol longer. And there are very few practical examples of recipes that are cooked long enough to remove every last trace of ethanol.

Here’s some numbers: According to research by the USDA, a sauce simmered at the boiling point of alcohol (173 degrees Fahrenheit) retains 40% of that alcohol after 15 minutes. Dishes that are removed from the heat soon after the alcohol is brought to a boil retain around 85%. (That would include most quick-fired pastas and pan sauces.) And–this one surprised me–even flambés leave a lot of alcohol behind, around 75%.

Depending on the size of the serving, the effect of the remaining alcohol may be negligible. But it’s still a big deal–or even dangerous–for someone who doesn’t drink. You have to cook food at a moderately high temperature for about 3 hours to get close to alcohol-free. And even then, it might not be suitable for people avoiding booze for alcohol recovery or for religious reasons.

So the next time you’re playing a game of “some for me, some for the pot,” I hope you find this post useful. If I have saved even one bottle of good Burgundy from winding up in a pot roast, it will have been worth it.

In hindsight, it all seems kind of obvious. Remember: Overspending on cooking wine is dumb, dry white wine goes with everything, and don’t kid yourself that your food is booze-free if you just watched yourself put booze in it. Cheers and bon appetit!